Connection is what matters to me. Heart-to-hearts, learning more about your life, and finding the trust to share mine breathes life into my soul. While there is the permanent “Story of a Lifetime” series, it’s important to me to continually push myself outside my comfort zone and to seek out meaningful conversations. So, I’ll post a question-and-answer each week. Doing so makes me vulnerable… and, I hope, inspires you to share. Sharing challenges despair by offering the reminder that, no matter what we’re experiencing, someone else intimately understands. Believing that brings connections. Each week, I’ll share an answer to random questions, and look forward to the conversations it may ignite.

Which is the first birthday you remember? How did your family celebrate birthdays?

People have celebrated birthdays for millenia. During the celebration, the ancient Greeks paid homage to Artemis, the moon goddess, by baking round cakes to symbolize the moon and candles to represent the reflected moonlight. In ancient times, the Germans lit candles to symbolize “the light of life.” Other cultures believed that the smoke from the candles carried the wishes skyward to the waiting gods. Over time, the practice of birthday celebrations became more commercialized (like a lot of things), and less symbolic.

However, in our family, birthdays have always been monumental events: special days set aside to celebrate and honor the birthday person. Scripture teaches us that we are made in the image of God. We also know that each human is unique: no one has my exact DNA, or yours. Since these two things are true, it means that each person has the opportunity to reveal a piece of God’s character to the world. I can learn something more about God from each person I interact with. So, then, it makes sense to dedicate one day a year to celebrating the life of every single person.

The earliest birthday I remember was in elementary school. I’m not sure exactly how old I turned, but I remember we took several friends to the movie theaters. The theater was empty when we entered, and we raced to the very front of the theater. We spent the time before the movie started laughing, and dancing up and down the aisle. Those who could (Mandi!) did cartwheels. While I don’t remember which movie we watched, I know it was fun. We also made great use of skating rinks for birthdays and, once, we rented a conference center to host the party. There were plenty of years where only a couple people came, but the ones who did created sweet memories.

My sixteenth was the best birthday. Being on the back of a horse fills me with a sense of freedom; of home. On the outskirts of Nashville, Mama found a horse stables and I sent out invites to a select group of four or five friends. Everything about this birthday was perfect from start to finish. A limousine pulled up to the school to pick us up, and, inside the limousine, was a bouquet of flowers for me. I remember loving the flowers; it was a small touch that made me feel special. As the limousine drove, laughter reigned. At a busy stop sign, one of the friends, Charles, rolled the window down, looked at the driver in the car beside us, and said, “Excuse me, do you have any grey poupon?”, and then rolled the window up. This was especially funny because, at the time, there was a commerical for Grey Poupon that entailed the same thing. Once at the stables, I was given my favorite horse, Prince. Prince was a white speckled horse who was exceptionally trained: I could shift my weight and he’d go whichever way I wanted him to. I wanted to run the horse, but Mark, the guide, didn’t want to do it with all of the teens.

I thought Mark was very cute, and he obliged me by taking me and my sister out for a longer ride on which he let us run Prince. At the end of the ride, the group gathered in the barn where Mama had purchased a beautiful cake shaped like an open book. On one side, it said “Once upon a time” and on the other side, it read, “She lived happily ever after.” That cake is still one of my favorites. The limousine was long gone by this time, but we still needed to get the friends back to the school, where they would be picked up by their parents. This party was extravagant, and undoubtedly hard for Mama to do; we did not have a van or a decent car. We had an ancient, rickety brown jalopy that made all kinds of racket and was very small. I crawled into the floorboard of the back side, as did someone else on the other side. The otheres squeezed in. Uncomfortable? Yes. Fun? Absolutely. We laughed the whole way back to the school.

Twenty years later, one of the friends who came that year still posts a picture of it to Facebook ever year on my birthday. We still laugh about the limousine ride. It made me feel special and surrounded with friends. It was a perfect birthday. Horses remain a special love of mine, and we’re still incorporating them into the celebrations. For my 43rd birthday, we drove two hours away to enjoy swimming with horses in the Florida bay. It felt like flying. I’ve carried on the tradition of extravagance for my girls’ celebrations. From epic sleepovers to massive parties at Sweet ‘N Sassy to birthday trips, each one strives to help them feel as celebrated as I did on my 16th

Life is hard. The more years that pass, the more challenging it is to believe in things like wonder and the harder it is to maintain confidence and the belief that you matter. Somehow, as we grow, heartbreak, responsibilities, and setbacks stick together like Legos to convince us we’re “just like everyone else.” The challenges of everyday life, and the loss of important dreams, makes it hard to believe the silent wishes we make before we blow out the candles really matter. Dreams are not made less meaningful just because the number of candles on the cake increase. Age does not reduce anyone’s value. If anything, age and maturity reveal more of our intended purpose and how our character reveals the likeness of God.

One of the two horses I’ve loved was named Prince. On his back, I felt like a princess. I don’t remember what I wished for surrounding the birthday cake in that barn but, today, it is that my own girls continue to delight in extravangant birthday celebrations and recognize that, on their birthdays and on every other day of the year, what they bring to the table is irreplaceable.